


Just A Stranger On A Bus

by maytheforcebewithlizzie



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Hux-centric, M/M, Murder, Protective Kylo Ren, Sad Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-06-08 22:30:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15253479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maytheforcebewithlizzie/pseuds/maytheforcebewithlizzie
Summary: He was here for a moment. And then he was gone.





	1. Bang! One Man Down

**Author's Note:**

> I am sad rn, so the story is sad too

_Hux Armitage, 34_

She stares at the name for a while before she opens the files. The man in the picture staring at her has a pair of cold, winter-like eyes. He isn't smiling, though the corners of his lips are already lifting up. There is no time to catch that moment when he smiles and Rey wonders if the person who took this photograph does remember the way Hux smiled. She feels the uneasiness that fills the void inside of her.

She puts the photograph on the side and leans against her chair. Her laptop is still opened and Word is still empty. The only thing she typed in was a title of the article, written in thick black letters. THE FACE OF THE TRUTH. She almost laughs when she reads the words she's written again. They sound lame, like any other article you find in the newspaper and quickly judge it before making an effort to read it.

Rey quietly considers spending her evening over the files she got from Luke. They are staring at her from her desk. She reads the name again and the face flashes in front of her eyes. She feels as shivers run down her spine when she remembers those eyes. Tomorrow, she promises herself when she finally stands up and stretches her body. Her muscles are sore from the lack of movement.

Rey finds the last carton of milk in an empty fridge. She doesn't waste her time by checking if it's already decayed and makes herself a coffee. That smell wakes her up enough to dismiss the thought of having a good night sleep. The thoughts haunt her when she makes her way to the living room and sits on the couch. The TV is not working and instead of watching any cliché series like she usually does, Rey stares at the black screen without blinking till her eyes start to water.

She briefly considers returning back to work but her knees are already hurting and she feels exhausted. The radio still plays in the kitchen. She usually turns down the volume without turning the device off but today she wants to get rid of the silence. Rey groans when she burns her tongue on too hot coffee after taking a single sip and her flat is suddenly filled with a round of angry coursing before she goes quiet again.

Rey turns her head to the side and lets it rest against the couch. Her flat is an empty space without almost no visible sign of her presence here. She isn't fond of family photographs, not that she has any. The walls are plain white and she never has the guts to leave here some mark of herself for anyone to find later. She can hear the sounds of the city coming from outside and for a moment she drowns herself in those sounds.

It's close to the midnight when her phone makes a low buzzing sound. Her eyes are closing but it's still not enough to send her to sleep. Rey mumbles something and warily eyes the abandoned cup of coffee resting near her hand. This time, when her phone starts buzzing again, she answers the call without caring to look at the screen and see who is calling her.

“Hey,” she mumbles as she untangles herself from the couch and makes her best not to yawn. She closes her eyes when she recognizes Finn's voice on the other side and her shoulders relax.

“Oh, hey,” Finn greets her with a nervous laugh. “I just wanted to remind you that tomorrow you have a scheduled meeting with Kylo Ren.” She recognizes that name but it takes her a few moments to remember who the man is.

“Hux's fiancé?” she asks to prove herself she's right and stumbles into the kitchen to find a pen and a piece of paper. She quickly writes the name down though she is sure she has it somewhere in the pile of papers on her table. The unsettling feeling reminds her why she needs to meet this man and her stomach turns upside-down. If she was supposed to describe the whole case, she would say only one word.  _Sick._ It rings in her ears when Finn speaks again.

“Yeah. He isn't fond of the whole process of questioning.” Rey cannot bring herself to blame that man. “I think he might kill me if I try to contact him ever again.” He nervously giggles. Rey's face remains stoic. She doesn't laugh. Maybe she's too tired for that.

“Do you have any other information?” she asks and makes sure her voice remains unbroken. She cannot break down in the middle of the investigation, no matter how hard it is. The voice inside of her head scolds her. This is far from the worst case she's ever had on her table and yet… There is something about it, something she cannot shake off no matter how much she tries.

“Police refuse to speak,” Finn says quietly. “They tell us off anytime we try to ask. They protect their own.”

“Fuck it,” Rey swear under her breath. “Goodnight, Finn!” She ends the calls before has Finn a chance to argue with her and throws her phone against the wall. It crashes with a loud sound and when she looks closer, she sees that the screen is broken. The pieces of glass fall on the floor and apart from that, the flat dives back into the silence accompanied by the music played in the radio.

Rey slowly returns back to the couch. She grabs the coffee she left there and drinks it all. Her mind is buzzing with thoughts and her eyes wander back on the table. She is careful not to look at the photograph. Luke warned her that the report was no fun to read.

“It's a bloody thing,” he told her then. “Messy and sick. Maybe you should skip reading it.” But she cannot. Instead of listening to her uncle’s advice, Rey slides on the chair and opens the files. She rereads the name on the top again.

_Hux, Armitage._

“I am sorry.”


	2. The People From The News Who Were Missing

The man standing in front of her is tall. He has a pale face and intriguing eyes. They stop on her face when he opens the doors, holding a cigarette in his left hand. He is all naked except for the towel wrapped around his hips and his hair is still soaked from the water.

“May I help you?” he asks instead of a greeting. His voice is hoarse, almost sad when he speaks. He puts the cigarette in-between his lips while he waits for her to answer.

“I am a reporter,” Rey says and sees a flash of understanding that spreads across Ren's features. He lets her in and motions her to go and sit in the living room. He brings her a cup of cold coffee and slides on an empty seat on the couch. The muscles underneath his skin strain and he stretches his legs in front of him. His face remains empty when he finally finds a comfortable position to sit in and looks at Rey with expectation.

Rey is quiet when she pulls a photograph from the inner pocket of her jacket. The winter-like eyes kept burning holes into her side. She brushes the messy strands of hair that fall into her face, knowing they all are tangled. She didn't bother to comb them this morning before she left her apartment. She looks like a ghost, with dark circles already creating under her eyes. She puts the photograph on the table between of them and shoves it in Ren's direction.

His movements freeze. He stares at the man on the picture as he leans closer to get a hold of the photograph. His eyes fill with tears and he gulps before blowing out smoke. Rey breathes it in and it burns her lungs. “He looks beautiful in that picture.”

“Yes,” Ren mumbles. He holds it so close. His fingers turn white from the painful grasp he holds it in and his shoulders start to shake. Rey finds herself wondering. How much grief does it take to break even someone as big as Ren is? He brushes his fingers against the face on the picture and put the cigarette out. A lonely tear slides down his cheeks and he holds back a sob tearing out of his throat. Rey is silent all that time. She didn't come to judge and it's not her place to tell him she's sorry.

“I hated him at first,” Ren admits. “I hated him so much that I wished something horrible would happen to him and now-“

He takes a deep breath. “It doesn't matter now, does it?” He laughs bitterly and looks at Rey. “You came to ask me questions. Go on. Tell me what you want to know.”

“Everything,” she admits. She wants to know why, how. She wants to know more about the ghost on that picture. By now, all she knew were facts stripped from details. The story needs a real person. And she is a writer, above anything else. Her fingers start to itch.

Ren blinks. “Everything?” he repeats with a cigarette between his lips. “Usually when they come, they want to know facts, not the whole story. Why are you so interested in him? You didn't know Hux. He didn't know you.”

Rey is quiet for a moment. “I know,” she admits and her voice shakes. “But I have a chance to get to know him now.”

“Maybe it's too late,” Ren mumbles. Maybe he's right but Rey doesn't tell him that. She watches as he closes his eyes. The tip of the cigarette is red like the blood and whenever he breathes out the smoke, Rey feels as it tickles her nose. The smoke smells like sadness, like burning leaves. It's a smell that clings to those who's lost something vital to them.

“He was an asshole,” Ren says with a laugh. “I mean, I am not going to lie about this one. Hux was one of his kind, you know. He was intelligent and smart and all of that. The world was already his but he didn't want to take it.” He pauses at that. “Have you ever met a person who changes everything in your life? Not just the way you live but also the way you are?”

“No, I cannot say I have.” The sad smile crossing Rey's lips prompts him to continue.

“We weren't like the other love stories, you know. The things were never gentle between the two of us. We argued, we bickered and we screamed. And we left.” He chuckles. “In the end, we always returned back to each other. I remember that he once left in a heavy rain. When he returned, I didn't know if it was the water of the tears rolling down his face. But he was back and only that mattered.” Rey breathes in the smoke again.

How funny, she finds herself thinking. The poison and the antidote in one. “His clothes were soaked and his hair seemed almost black as it was glued on his face.” Rey can see him now, the man standing in the shadows. He is wearing jeans and a shirt, both soaked from the rain. His usually red hair is glued to his forehead and his face is white like milk.

He is standing in the middle of the living room while Ren speaks. His whole figure is unmoving and his hands are folded behind his back. The water is falling down, mixing with the blood as it goes. Rey stares at the holes underneath the shirt and her stomach twists unpleasantly. Then she notices man's eyes, winter-like, staring right at her.

“Who proposed?” she asks.

Ren blinks. “I did. I mean, he wanted me to. He wanted me to fall on my knees with a ring in my hand. It took me years to figure it out and years to actually do it. I asked him on his birthday, three months ago. We were here, exactly in this room. I remember he was wearing those stupid pyjamas with cats. I kneeled down and he stared at me in disbelief. I asked him and he said yes.” There is a moment of silence and when Rey looks at Ren sitting in front of her, she sees tears rolling down his cheeks like raindrops. “I regret that I didn't ask him sooner, you know. I thought we had time.”

“That's the problem,” Rey finds herself saying. “Everyone thinks they have time but in fact, they don't.” Ren offers her a cigarette and Rey shakes her head a little. She cannot bring herself to smoke. Not now when she's tasted the grief on the tip of her tongue.

Her heart skips another beat when she skims the apartment with her eyes, trying to look for the looming figure soaked in water. She knows he's not real. But she smiles when she sees that the corners of his lifts up.

**X X X**

On the way back from Ren, she stops in the park. It's snowing and the air is growing cold. She knows her cheeks are flushed red and that her lips are shaking. The snowflakes are tangling in her hair. She takes out a notebook and sits on an empty bench. She can hear the song the city sings. She sees the ghosts walking in the distance.

She writes down the name again and then stares in front of herself with half-lidded eyes. The blood is roaring in her ears. Her eyes stop on the place hidden by the trees and she stands up. Her knees are shaking when she crosses the distance and her throat tightens.

She remembers the photographs. She memorized every one of them. Her phone rings and she answers the call. “How it went?” Luke asks from the other side and she imagines him sitting behind his desk with hands crossed over his chest. She bites her lips as she stares in front of herself at the snow and feels the familiar stinging of tears in her eyes. She brushes them away with the back of her hand.

“It was fine,” Rey finds herself saying. “He was devastated. They all are.”

“And what about you?”

“What about me?” Rey asks. She shudders when the wind starts to blow.

“I am worried about you, Rey,” Luke admits hesitantly. “You are not yourself these days. Where are you now?”

“I am in the park. I needed a time for myself to think.”

She needs to stop thinking though. With the tip of her boot, Rey kicks into the snow. It's still red. The red stains are turning into the sea of blood. She wasn't here to witness as the body was found but the photographs are in the files as well. She couldn't look at them though. She knows what happened in this place, she just needs to collect the dots, find the connection and maybe, just maybe find out if there was a way to prevent this.

She hears as Luke sighs. “Maybe you should go home. It's getting cold.”

“It started to snow,” she mumbles. Rey sticks out her tongue and tastes the snow on the tip of her tongue. It feels so pure. The smoke is still heavy in her lungs. She knows she smells of cigarettes and sadness. It clings to her like a second skin. “I am fine,” she swears to Luke. Or maybe she is trying to convince herself. “I am just trying to find my own way to deal with this.”

She doesn't say anything else. Luke ends the call in silence and Rey puts the mobile back into her pocket. She lays down into the snow, just in the place where she sees the most of the blood. She immediately feels the cold radiating from the ground. She stares up at the sky.

The snow continues falling. The snowflakes are melting on her cheeks. They create those long rivers of water. Rey finds herself imagining her own death. She imagines being someone else, lying on the cold ground and knowing that she will die here tonight. How did it feel like, to know that there was nothing to change? She imagines wanting to scream but not being able to. The snow is slowly swallowing her up and covering her whole.

She shivers when someone screams and she raises her head up. The old woman is pointing her small, crooked finger at Rey. Her eyes are like broken mirrors. “You think it's funny,” the woman says. “Death is not a joke. Think of the family, how they are suffering now.”

Rey stands up abruptly. She cleans the front of her jacket from snow and lowers her gaze to the ground. She is still breathing. It brings her no satisfaction though.

Her phone makes a low buzzing sound.

 

> _You said you were a writer. KL_

She stares at the message for a while. She remembers only faintly she gave Ren her number in case of an emergency. Her clothes are soaked through and her whole body is trembling. It's not from cold, not this time.

 

> _Yes. I am._

The message comes immediately after that. It pops on her screen and Rey doesn't hesitate while opening it. The wind is playing with the strands of her tangled hair. She needs to wash them soon.

 

> _Can you write about him?_

There is a certain desperation in that message. Rey knows how it feels like to lose someone you hold dear. She lost someone too, though she doesn't remember that. She found only a name written on a paper, evidence of life that burned out sooner than it should. She remembers nothing of her sister. But she knows she is gone and the hole she left inside of Rey's heart won't ever heal. She thinks that sometimes she sees her face in the mirror. Twins are supposed to be the same. Sometimes she thinks she is looking at the dead girl, that she is just another ghost like those in her stories.

Except there is no one to write about her. And so she keeps her ghosts close. They haunt her in the dead of the night when the others sleep.

Rey blinks away tears. She finds herself typing an answer. 

 

> _Yes. Yes, I can._


	3. In The Morning Is Everything Black

That night she opens the files for the first time with an intention to read them. She put on the news and now listens to the faint voice coming from the radio. She stares at the photographs in front of her and slowly, she starts to connect the dots, filling the black space with the storyline.

At first, there's too much red. It reminds her art lessons when she spilled the red watercolor on the paper. It was everywhere, on the paper, on the desk and on her hands. She washed it away but by the time she did it, the paper dried. Rey stares at it now. It feels like she can see all the blood from all over the world soaking into the snow.

The body in the photograph is lying on its back. The man's face is turned up to face the sky and his eyes are closed. She knows the name of this man but she doesn't want to say it. The dead don't deserve to have names. The names belong to the living. Rey remembers the joke someone told her. That his heart was so cold that the snow didn't melt when it fell on the tip of his tongue.

Her eyes stop on that face. She stares at it for hours just to remember his sharp features. He looks beautiful, surrounded by snow. His hair has the same color as the blood does. They curl around him like a crown made of fire. She likes him better with his eyes opened. She has to remind herself repeatedly that he no longer belongs to those living. It's unfair of her to ask him to look alive.

It's almost one clock in the morning when she reads the report. _Male, 34, stabbed to death._ She read there were seventy stab wounds. Each one deeper than the last. A sick part of her wonders if he was alive all that time or if he died before. If there's an answer to this question, she doesn't try to find it.

By the time she is done, she opens her phone and stares at the notes she made while she was visiting Ren. They paint a different picture, not a dead corpse but a living man. The red is suddenly gone and she can see others colors as well. Most of the time, she tries to imagine him standing in the rain with a warm smile crossing his lips. She wonders if Ren wasn't making it up but Rey finds herself wishing to see that kind of smile on such a cold face.

She tries to imagine him wearing a suit on his own wedding. Leaning closer and pressing a quick kiss against Ren's lips. So many chances, so many opportunities wasted. It was a mistake to think they have years and years to make their dreams true. In fact, they had only this little time. In nine months, he was supposed to be thirty-five. In less than two he was supposed to be married.

Rey read the story Ren told her over and over again. He was right, they were not another love story. Rey heard enough of those. Her fingers start to shake and she licks blood from her lips. Maybe this is the fate stepping in, she finds herself thinking. Maybe they were not meant to be together.

At two o'clock in the morning, Rey discards the photographs and goes to bed. She doesn't bother to put on her pyjamas. Instead, she lies between the sheets in her jacket and jeans and keeps thinking. Her eyes are wide open. The red color is fading with time. Soon, there will be no proof of it. The snow will turn white again.

Rey isn't sure when she starts to address him as Hux. It comes naturally and after a while, she fills in the emptiness he left behind. When she turns on her side, she sees his figure in the darkness, standing in front of her bed. He cannot speak and she knows he's not real.

“He loves you so much,” she says. Hux is quiet for a long while. His winter-like eyes are fixed on Rey's face. His lips aren't moving.

“How did it feel?” she asks instead. “How did it feel to die?” He opens his mouth to speak and Rey imagines being the one who died instead of him. Then the reality hits her and she is back in her flat, lying in her bed.

_It was unfair,_ he says and Rey knows it's not his voice. She just made it up to make him answer the questions she couldn't.

**X X X**

She meets him again during the funeral. He stands in the back and nods at people who pass by. His face is pale and eyes dull from the pain. He isn't crying and Rey wonders if there are any more tears left to cry. She doesn't go to him at first. Her fingers still ache from the hours of writing and deleting her words. She feels ashamed but doesn't know why.

The funeral is quiet. Not many people come and between those who are there, Rey doesn't recognize any familiar faces. She stares at the coffin in front of herself. She holds a bunch of flowers and wonders if Hux would appreciate the gesture. She feels stupid, thinking about the man she doesn't know and who is dead now.

But maybe she does know him. There is not much place that needs filling in. It's not her job to find the murderer. Rey sits quietly through the ceremony and walks with the others when times come to bury the coffin underneath the ground. No one is crying when they stand in an open air. There is a thin blanket of snow covering the ground of the cemetery.

The graves are standing close to each other. She doesn't bother to read the names there, knowing there is nothing she can do for them. There are too many stories, too many words left unsaid. They keep swallowing her up.

Ren doesn't make a speech. He is standing at the back and looking in front of himself. The coffin disappears under the ground. Rey doesn't understand the concept of the death quiet like she would like to. It's strange to know that someone is there one day and gone the following one. She doesn't want to think about what happens now when the body is already buried.

Instead, she makes her way to Ren when the crowd of people starts moving to the sides. “I am sorry,” she says and those words sound strange to her own ears. She has nothing to apologize for and yet it feels right to show regret.

Ren looks at her. His face is grey. “It's done then,” he mumbles and keeps looking at the ground. “I knew it would be quick.”

“Death is always quick.”

“I was told that he died slowly,” Ren says bitterly. “That he bled out alone in the snow. He was awake for hours and hours, knowing that no one is coming to get him.” His voice breaks in the middle and he looks at Rey in despair. “I want to find the one who did this. I want to find them and make them suffer.”

“And what good will it make to him?” she asks, maybe too harshly and her eyes stop on Ren's face. “He is dead, you know. Dead don't return back from the grave just because you avenged them.” She thinks of her sister again. Rey tells him that story too. “She is gone just like him,” she mumbles. “But we are not.” Those words taste like ashes in her mouth. She turns her head up to the sky. But who good does it make to us?

“And what now?” he asks.

Last night Rey spent hours and hours sitting in the dark room and writing down the words. It's hard to write when the words you want to say mean so much to you. There are papers piling on her desk. Sentences she left. Words she wanted to say but didn't know how. She stares at Ren for a long while and he stares right back.

“We need to find a way to move on.”

They do move on in fact. They end in Ren's apartment, between the cooling sheets. Rey strokes Ren's face and his hair. She presses a kiss against his lips, all that time wondering if she can compete against a dead man who was here before her.

Their clothes are lying on the ground and they are both naked. She can feel how hot his skin really is. He touches her violently and his kisses are filled with grief. When he slides inside of her, she moans and then yells his name. “Hux,” he mumbles into the crooked of her neck and starts snapping his hips forward. She tangles her fingers in his messy hair.

“Hux,” he says again and she finds out it doesn't matter to her. She lets him drown in his sorrow. Only once he spills inside of her and his hips stop moving, she realizes they both are crying. His tears are wetting the skin of her neck. He presses soft kisses there, all while mumbling his fiancé's name all over and over again. When Rey turns her head to the side, she imagines Hux lying here in her place. He would kiss Ren on his lips and tell him how much he loved him. Or maybe not. It's just another imagination.

She kisses Ren on his cheek. She stroked his back and holds him closer at least for tonight. “I am sorry,” he mumbles, shaking. There is a ring on his finger. It's just another reminder of the ghost trapped inside of these walls. She reaches to touch it. It's cold under her fingers. Hux didn't have his ring when his body was found. It was gone. Just like his life was.

“It's okay,” she whispers into the darkness. She knows that ghosts are watching them.

**X X X**

She leaves before Ren wakes up. Instead of heading home, she goes to the park. On the way there, she buys a newspaper.

It's still too early in the morning and the wind is freezing. She is shaking in her dark dress but it doesn't matter. Rey returns on the place where Hux was murdered and stares at the snow. There is no red anymore. It's gone now, just like the body.

Rey opens the newspaper. His face is on the second page. She recognizes those winter-like eyes immediately.

When she is done with reading, she opens up her notebook again. _The world is made of ghosts,_ she starts writing down. _And as the time passes, they start to fade. The blood is washed away, the snow melts. They are left in memories, where they are meant to be._

She stops writing. She imagines Hux standing in front of her. All those chances missed. One life wasted away. She remembers Ren's moans, calling Hux's name over and over again. _But what's left of those who are left behind? We are ghosts too, ghosts with beating hearts._

She imagines how it feels like, that cold touch of death. Her pen stills. _Hux, Armitage,_ she writes down. The snow starts to fall down on her shoulders.

**X X X**

Five miles away, a woman looks down and finds a ring lying on the ground. She turns to her husband and picks it up. “Look,” she says and puts the ring into his warm palm. The smile on her face is warm like the sunny day.

Her eyes sparkle. Her husband laughs. “This bride's married by now,” he says.

Almost.

Not quite.


End file.
